


Left Me With Only The Photographs And My Tears

by ViolaWay



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolaWay/pseuds/ViolaWay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Louis said ‘don’t leave me’ but Harry did, because hospitals are full of death and Harry was just another fading light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Me With Only The Photographs And My Tears

Contrary to what Harry’s family believes, Louis does not spend all of his time at the hospital. In fact, on the day Harry dies, Louis only visits once, in the morning—before it happens.

Which is why it’s a day later when he finds out.

He can’t exactly blame Anne or Des for not telling him, but he thinks, later, that a phone call would have been much kinder. Instead, on the seventh of March, with the sun shining outside, Louis walks into Harry’s hospital room with two Styrofoam cups of tea in his hands, and he sees. He sees an empty bed, made up neat and white, with no smiling boy in it, covers tucked up to his chin. He sees no trace of the flowers he brought in yesterday. They’d been lovely, yellow roses. They’re gone now.

It’s empty. A blank page. Like Harry’s existence has been scrubbed clean, like it meant nothing to begin with.

The cups drop first, but Louis follows soon after—body crumbling and knees hitting the linoleum floor with a sickening crack. And he thinks, _No._ He thinks, _No, no, no._ There has to be some mistake. A loophole. Harry’s room’s been moved. He’s still here; Louis just has to find him.

He’d meant to come back, is the thing. Yesterday. It had been Harry’s first incrogen treatment, and Louis had been planning on coming back, after. But Harry had texted him, half an hour after Louis left. ‘ _they say i’m gonna look awful afterwards, throwing up and sweating and stuff. have a day off, gem’ll look after me. love you. x’_ Then, ten minutes after that, ‘ _they’re making me eat a banana idk what that has to do with incrogen but it’s a good start. x’_

Louis had surmised that Harry was fine, and probably wouldn’t appreciate his presence anyway (Harry always hated it when Louis was there while he was sick) so he’d gone home and played Fifa with Niall for a bit before falling asleep, smiling because the incrogen was going to make Harry better.

He doesn’t know how long he kneels there, uncomprehending, before he curls into a ball on the floor, cheek pressed against the cold tiles and spilled tea, ears ringing. He doesn’t cry; he just lies there and feels hollow until he feels arms wrapping around him, pulling him up. Gemma. She’s always been the only non-Harry member of the Styles family who sympathises with him, and he struggles against her arms for a token two seconds before he’s breaking, hiccupping sobs into her neck.

She holds him a bit like Harry used to, and she pulls him away from the plain paper room and back into the hospital’s waiting room. He’s deposited into a chair, and he doesn’t know how to speak, how to pretend to be okay. He was always good at pretending, for Harry. Without Harry, he feels like he’s been ripped apart and that there’s no one who’s going to be able to stitch him back together, to make him into a rag-doll man. It was hard when Harry was diagnosed, and it’s been hard ever since, but this is worse than Louis knows how to cope with.

Gemma doesn’t speak, which is good; she gets him some water from the sad-looking machine in the corner, and it slides down Louis’ throat like poison. He drinks it all.

There’s a lot of crying, in the hospital, he notices. There’s a little girl crying in the corner, a teenage boy three seats down, and a woman with a baby across from him. Louis wonders who they’re crying about. Whether they’re crying over someone who deserves their tears as much as Harry does. He thinks probably not.

***

When Harry was diagnosed, Louis didn’t know what to do. Harry told him over the phone on a hot summer morning; Louis was out in his garden sunbathing, and he just couldn’t reply for a long moment, feeling the sun beating down on his body more acutely than he had done a minute before, feeling his breath get lost in his throat, his body tensing. And Harry asked, “Lou, are you still there?”

Louis used to think that he’d always be able to answer Harry. Wherever Harry was, whenever he needed it, Louis would find a way to answer the boy. Even when Harry first told him, Louis still believed that. So he said, “Yeah, Haz,” and his voice cracked and his smile cracked and his soul cracked cleanly in two, but he would always, always answer his Harry.

“’s not too serious, babe. They’re gonna be able to fix it. We’ll be fine. Always are, innit?”

“You promise?” Louis didn’t realise he was crying. Harry did.

“Yeah, Lou, ‘course. You know I can never lie to you. We’ll be perfect, just like always. Can I come over, though? I think I need a cuddle.”

“’Course, babe. If your mum lets you?” Louis said, scratching red lines into his wrist. He looked at his veins, and wondered if he watched closely enough, would he be able to see the journey of the blood through them? Would he be able to see his life force, his survival, trickling through his body? Would he be able to see it when it failed?

“I don’t care if she says no,” Harry replied, fierce determination in his tone. The phone went dead. Louis cried.

He managed to put on a brave face for when Harry arrived ten minutes later, in an oversized purple hoodie and some of Louis’ TOMs.

“Hey, babe,” Louis greeted him, and his voice cracked.

“Lou,” Harry mumbled, stumbling over his own feet to get to Louis, to get into his arms and tuck himself in small. “Lou, I’m sorry, please, I—”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, little Hazza,” Louis said, because he had to be brave enough for both of them. Something inside him was shattering. “’s just a tumour being a right knob, yeah? And they’re gonna use whatever they can to get it out, and you’re gonna live to be a hundred.”

He managed to get Harry upstairs to his bedroom, to where they collapsed on a single bed and curled into each other. They lay together, like they had countless times before. And Louis thought about all those times, then; he couldn’t help it. He thought about Harry separate and needy, peaceful and sleepy, satiated and always, always perfect. He was so perfect Louis couldn’t breathe, sometimes. Everything he did was so lovely, so…full of life. Louis couldn’t imagine a world without Harry. He couldn’t imagine his life without a boy who defined him, who loved him so unconditionally it hurt, who forgave Louis before Louis even asked for forgiveness.

And Louis swore that he wouldn’t let anything take Harry away from him.

And Louis was wrong.

But they lay together, that afternoon, on a bed too small for them, and they anchored each other to the earth like only they knew how to do, holding on like they’d never let go.

When Harry dies, it’s like he’s floated away.

***

Cancer is an evil thing. Louis has always known this, but he didn’t _know_ it until his sweet, beautiful Harry got a lung tumour at the age of seventeen without ever having touched a cigarette in his life.

He knows it now more than ever, because Harry was eighteen when he died, and it was all Cancer’s fault.

Then again, maybe Cancer isn’t as evil as doctors. Doctors who test experimental miracle drugs on boys who smell like sunshine and love everyone like they’ll never stop—who have people who love them back.

Louis remembers with vivid clarity when Harry told him about the incrogen, how hopeful he’d been that it would make Cancer go away.

The incrogen did not make Cancer go away. The incrogen made Harry go away.

Gemma tells him, in a crowded waiting room of a sickly hospital, that after the first injection Harry was fine. The he went in for radiotherapy; the drug reacted with the radiation, made it so that more cells were being ionised than the doctors could keep track of. Apparently the animal tests didn’t prepare them for that. The thing is: gamma radiation is safe (mostly). Gamma radiation and incrogen together is deadly (always). Harry was allowed to be one of the first human test subjects because they filed him under ‘terminal’.

Harry was not terminal. He told Louis he was going to survive.

Louis believed him.

“Early stages,” Harry said, back in August. “They’ve caught it early, so I’m gonna be fine.”

Seven months later, Harry died.

Louis blames the incrogen, he blames Cancer, he blames the doctors, and he blames himself.

***

The day after Harry dies, Louis and Cancer have a talk.

“Why him?” Louis asks, and he’s crying, because he hasn’t stopped since he started. He doesn’t know how to stop. “Why did you have to take _him_?”

“Everyone has to die sometime,” Cancer shrugs. That’s not a good enough answer for Louis. He thinks that if Cancer took his Harry away from him, then it should at least have the decency to answer him properly.

“Most people die after they’ve lived,” Louis argues.

“And Harry did live,” Cancer responds. “He lived an incredibly full life, didn’t he? He found you, and you _were_ his life.”

“You took him away from me.”

“Well, that’s just not fair, is it? _I_ never took anyone away from you. It was some untested drugs and a bit of radiation that took your Harry away from you,” Cancer says reasonably.

“You started it,” Louis says childishly.

“Yes,” Cancer replies. “That I did. I suppose it wasn’t very kind of me, was it? I could take you away, too. Would you be happier that way, Louis Tomlinson? If it all just went away?”

***

When Louis wakes up, he’s still crying.

His face is stuck to his pillow with the salt water, and the inside of his mouth tastes like blood. His skin feels cold.

He doesn’t see the point in leaving his bed, not really. He won’t be wanted at the Styles’, and that’s the only other place he can think to be. He thinks that maybe sitting in Harry’s old room, with the framed photograph of him and Louis together, with Louis’ clothes in Harry’s wardrobe and Harry’s secret make-up collection, Louis might feel like Harry isn’t gone. That there isn’t a gaping, cavernous hole carved out of his chest. He doubts Anne will let him in, though. Even now.

***

When Harry and Louis told Anne about their relationship, she cried. Harry did, too. He held Louis’ hand through it, apologising profusely as his mum broke down over something that, to Louis, wasn’t a big deal.

Sure, he’d been brought up by a woman who’s taught him since he was as young as he could remember that love was wonderful, no matter who it was for. When Louis had come out to her, at fourteen, she’d shrugged and gestured to his pink skinny jeans, and neither of them had cried. When he’d told Jay about Harry, she’d hugged him tight and told him that she couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to get there.

(She was right, Louis’d been oblivious for far too long.)

But Anne was beyond reasoning, and when he crying approached sobbing, Louis had to ask, “Why are you upset?”

He didn’t mean to sound rude, or to overstep his boundaries, but after how his own mother had reacted, he only wanted that for Harry as well. He always wanted the best for Harry.

“My little boy,” she sobbed, and Louis tried not to feel disgusted. “My little boy, and he’s…”

“Gay, yes,” Louis said. “But he’s still the same. Nothing’s changed except for the fact that we’re in love. That we have been for a long time. I’m sorry, but I just can’t see why this would upset you. It’s not like he’s dying, for God’s sake!”

“I think you should leave,” Anne said.

“Why? So you can tell Harry that what he’s feeling is wrong? I don’t think I should leave, Miss Cox, because whatever you can say to him, you can say to me as well.”

“Harry, you need to think about the decision you’re making,” Anne said hollowly. “I think you’ll regret it.”

Harry said quietly, speaking for the first time, “I don’t think I will.”

When Harry was sad, Louis felt like the ocean. If he got too close, then Harry would drown, so all he could do was lap uselessly at the edges of Harry’s pain, eroding away the misery. It always took too long, because every moment in the face of Harry’s crumpled expression was a moment that Louis didn’t want to exist. It was worst when he was the cause, but that wasn’t the case now. So all he could do was wait, wait and hope that Harry would never find it within himself to regret him, no matter what his mum said.

Things have been strained between Louis and Anne ever since then, although he thinks that she might have come around on the whole ‘gay’ thing. He hopes that she did, eventually. He hopes that she told Harry that she accepted him for who he was, before he was gone.

He thinks that Des probably never did. Des, who left Harry’s life when Harry was still a toddler and only came back when Cancer paid Harry a visit, and who called Harry a ‘poof’ when Louis held his hand.

Louis wants to hate them both, he really does. He wants to be able to blame them, because they signed that paperwork that led to a medical procedure that went so, so wrong. But Harry signed that paper, too. And Louis could never blame Harry for anything.

***

There was a time, back in November, when Harry actually thought he was going to die. He got so ill, so weak, and he was moved into the hospital permanently. He cried a lot, because it hurt, and he couldn’t look Louis in the eye. Because, written all over Louis face, was ‘ _you promised’_.

Of _course_ Louis didn’t blame Harry for any of it, but Harry had _promised_ and Louis couldn’t—he couldn’t breathe most of the time he was looking at Harry, a Harry who didn’t smile, who didn’t speak, who could no longer hope.

“You said you were gonna be okay,” Louis whispered when Harry was asleep, and he broke down more times than he cares to admit.

Harry got better, though. Not completely—the last four months of his life were spent almost exclusively in the hospital, with a private room and a nearly permanent visitor—but he smiled again, told Louis he was going to be fine—“I _told_ you, Louis, why were you worried about me?”—and neither of them talked about it until a conversation at midnight where Harry told Louis what to do when he died.

And Louis said ‘don’t leave me’ but Harry did, because hospitals are full of death and Harry was just another fading light.

***

Louis isn’t invited to Harry’s funeral. It’s like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut, it’s like all the air has been taken out of his body because _he didn’t even get to say goodbye._

(They said goodbye, once, six months ago, when the first treatment didn’t work.)

Gemma fights on his behalf, but it’s not her battle, in the end, and she has to let it go. Louis tells her to. There’s no point in him tearing a broken family further apart. He wonders if Harry’s angry, watching from wherever he is, or if he’s sad. He wonders if Harry is anywhere at all.

When they’re at the town’s stained glass church dressed in black, Louis grabs one of Harry’s jumpers out of his wardrobe for the first time since, and drowns himself in it, and then he grabs the spare key Harry made for him in secret; he makes the walk to the Styles’ house and lets himself in the back door, and he goes up to Harry’s room and find it…empty.

Of course it is.

Louis sits down in the middle of the floor and stares at the Blu-tack stains on the wall where Harry’s photo collage used to be. He sits and he doesn’t speak until the silence is roaring in his ears and his brain feels like static, and he physically has to. And he says,

“I love you, Hazza. I love you now and I love you tomorrow and a hundred years from now and I love you in the dark and in the light and you already knew that, didn’t you? Did I tell you enough times that you’d never forget? Even if everything else is gone, even if you’re just a bunch of atoms up in the sky, did I tell you enough times that you’ll know, even if you don’t _know?_ You told me enough times, I think. I can still hear your lovely voice, y’know. You said ‘I love you, Louis’ every day, I think. More than that, maybe. You told me all the time and I felt it. Like your love was something I could retreat into whenever I wanted, like it was a beacon of light in my own mind, like you were always there. You’re gone, now, but I still feel it. It hurts, though. It’s like the light’s become blinding, and I can’t look at it without crying, without feeling like I’m being torn apart. I think I loved you too much, Harry. I think I let you have too much of me. I think I hate living without you. I’m sorry. You always thought I was strong, but I was stronger when I was with you.”

***

“You’ll be okay, won’t you, Lou?” Harry whispered.

Louis was holding his hand in a dark room, and they couldn’t see each other’s faces. He replied, “When?”

“When I die.”

“You’re not going to die, Harry,” Louis said fingers tightening around Harry’s. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“I’m gonna die eventually,” Harry replied. “Maybe it won’t be in this hospital. Maybe it won’t be Cancer’s fault at all. Maybe I’ll die in my sleep of old age and I’ll have lived as much of a life as anyone. But if I go before you do, you’ll be okay, won’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Louis responded truthfully. “I miss you when you go on holiday for a week.”

“You’ll have to be, though. You’ll have to be fine.” Harry’s voice sounded desperate; Louis wished he could lie for him. “You’ll have to look after Gemma and my mum and you’re—Louis, you’re something special, and you can’t give up on that. You’ve got keep inspiring people with your voice, you’ve gotta find someone else…”

“Why do I get the feeling we’re not talking about old age anymore?” Louis’ voice broke. _He_ broke. “Harry, I can’t find anyone else. I don’t want to. I don’t _need_ to. Look, Haz, try and imagine if I—if I were to…”

“I don’t want to ever be the reason you’re unhappy,” Harry murmured.

“Don’t die, then.” Louis tried to laugh. He choked.

Harry pulled him in, then, lifting his body up and pressing his lips against Louis’, conveying all the desperation and all the pain and all of their helpless love without the words that neither of them knew how to say.

After that night, Louis started wondering if every kiss was their last.

***

The week before Harry died, he was getting better, so Louis was allowed to take him out of the hospital, to let him get fresh air and see the world as if awoke from winter, as the sun began to shine again and the sky morphed from grey to blue.

They ended up in a tattoo parlour, with ideas of a stupid feat of teenage rebellion (Louis was twenty by this point, but still insisted on being called a teenager. It made Harry smile. Anything was worth Harry’s smile.) and they came out with gauze on their arms and giddy smiles on their faces, and Louis swung Harry around and peeked under the plaster to see the words ‘ _won’t stop till we surrender_ ’ inked onto Harry’s porcelain skin.

When they held hand, their tattoos touched, and they were giddy with it, and they went back to Louis’ house and felt like time didn’t matter, because they were each other’s and nothing could touch them.

***

When Harry dies, Louis dies too, and the fact that he’s still on the earth doesn’t mean a thing, because his world is Harry.

And Harry’s world is Louis.

Nothing can change that.

**Author's Note:**

> i almost cried while writing this, so i hope you appreciate me emotionally torturing myself  
> the science is sort of accurate because we're doing radiation in science at the moment  
> incrogen is a Made Up Thing, though


End file.
